canon rumors FORUM

I really like silver efex pro. Admittedly I rarely do custom stuff, the presets are really great and I usually find one that just works perfectly with the image I'm converting. Occasionally i will adjust the sliders a little, but most of the time I "try on" the presets until I find the one that "fits".

I will give you an example of B&W post processing in the link below. Before B&W conversion, author here first adjusted luminosity contrast and colour contrast. He was using quite complicated approach, so if you are not familiar with photoshop, this could be too complicated. But the point is, to achieve the best luminosity and colour contrast before making B&W image.

I spent years doing B&W conversions using the various incarnations of PhotoShop's tools for this, starting with conversions in the LAB color space before they added the convert to B&W stuff. PS wasn't always so sophisticated

These days, I have lots of tools including Nik Silver Efex Pro, which I have had limited success with as well. My favorite tool in recent years is DxO Filmpack. I find that many of the profiles get me the look I'm wanting, or do with some minor tweaking. The chemists with Agfa, Fuji, Ilford, and Kodak spent many years coming up with those looks so I think there's something to them.

.Thanks for the good words on DxO Filmpacks. I've had other people say it works well.

Do they ever lower their price for sales or such?

Also, how might you think it compares to Nik Analog Efex? I've played a little bit with this, but not B&W.

Yes, they have sales fairly frequently, but I think the most recent one ended on 7/31. Sorry, but there should be another along soon, probably around Photokina time, if they follow patterns of the past. I think the profiles are quite a bit better than Nik's based on how they create them and the interface is a lot easier to use. You can download a free trial and play around with it.

If you are not afraid to experiment a bit, and/or you have a limited budget, let me recommend "Gimp". It is open source software that aims to provide Photoshop like functionality. Photoshop lovers hate it, but I won't enter that religious war, it does what it does.Anyway, it offers you a channel mixer option, where you can create a B&W image from a single RGB channel, or any custom combination of channels you want (i.e. 80% R + 15% G + 5% B). You can even use negative values, which in some cases it makes sense (e.g., negative blue if you want to darken that bright purple shirt that your model was wearing without affecting the skin tone).

If you go down this route, you might also want to install the "g'mic" plugin and play with its channel mixer. That one allows you to mix in different colorspaces (CMYK, HSV, Lab, RGB and YCbCr).

If you are not afraid to experiment a bit, and/or you have a limited budget, let me recommend "Gimp". It is open source software that aims to provide Photoshop like functionality. Photoshop lovers hate it, but I won't enter that religious war, it does what it does.Anyway, it offers you a channel mixer option, where you can create a B&W image from a single RGB channel, or any custom combination of channels you want (i.e. 80% R + 15% G + 5% B). You can even use negative values, which in some cases it makes sense (e.g., negative blue if you want to darken that bright purple shirt that your model was wearing without affecting the skin tone).

If you go down this route, you might also want to install the "g'mic" plugin and play with its channel mixer. That one allows you to mix in different colorspaces (CMYK, HSV, Lab, RGB and YCbCr).

Happy hacking.

G'MIC plugin also includes various film emulation filters, including some b+w.

If you are not afraid to experiment a bit, and/or you have a limited budget, let me recommend "Gimp". It is open source software that aims to provide Photoshop like functionality. Photoshop lovers hate it, but I won't enter that religious war, it does what it does.Anyway, it offers you a channel mixer option, where you can create a B&W image from a single RGB channel, or any custom combination of channels you want (i.e. 80% R + 15% G + 5% B). You can even use negative values, which in some cases it makes sense (e.g., negative blue if you want to darken that bright purple shirt that your model was wearing without affecting the skin tone).

If you go down this route, you might also want to install the "g'mic" plugin and play with its channel mixer. That one allows you to mix in different colorspaces (CMYK, HSV, Lab, RGB and YCbCr).

I don't have that much of a process myself; one day I feel the need to create ultra-contrasty, moody B/W's, other days they end up hazy, with low contrast and overexposed. And I'm never smart enough to write down what I did and how I was thinking (if at all).For future experiments, not specifically in B/W, I've started to look for other SW - Gimp has been mentioned, but to that I can add DarkTable (www.darktable.org), and Photivo (photivo.org). Perhaps it can give some of you ideas for new or better ways to process B/W.